A huge shoutout to my two editors / proofreaders who have really helped me write this. They know who they are.
Aisling took a step back to admire her handiwork. She'd installed a custom airlock in the side of the lowest level of the second and third shuttle chassis. This would allow both shuttles to hover a few metres above the ground to allow a Titan-class battlemech to drop onto the battlefield, without the need of a drop pod. The entire mechanism saved enough space to allow team D to store three titans within each shuttle, instead of two, but would require the shuttles to drop from orbit into atmosphere to deploy their Titans. She'd also modified the seats to rotate. Depending on whether the shuttle was hovering horizontally above ground or accelerating vertically towards its destination, its seats would rotate to maximise their occupants' comfort.
"We've nearly finished the third shuttle, Jaggerjack," she said into her communicator. "Just some fuel and the AI and we're done."
(Author's note: I wrote Jenni's part in her accent. I'm sorry. Remove V's entirely, or replace them with W's and/or F's, and Z's with TH's, and this will make sense. If you don't understand something Jenni says, try saying it aloud, quickly and softly while rolling your R's.
If you really find it hard to read, skip to the bottom of this chapter. I have edited this section to make it easier to read.)
"All right, lesten up every body," called Jenni through her accent. "Here iz ze plan. I onli intend to zay it vonce."
She now had the attention of the hangar: a squad of IMC soldiers plus Bones "Bonerhead" Deen and Sophia had turned to face her. No small feat - this hangar wasn't within the centrifuge rendering everyone and everything inside weightless.
"Zere iz a shuttle arriving at zis hangar in ten minutes, azzembled by vone of our teams on ze ground. Ven it arrives I vant us to be headed off to Carlyle as szoon az possible. Ze problem is, we're going to be in cryosleep during ze entire zourney zo I'm explaining ze plan now.
Ze shuttle vill arrive. We vill follow ze orders of our mechaniks Bonerhead and zSophia, who vill show us how to load ze shuttles with cryopods. We replace ze shuttle's engines and zjump drive with our own rockets and zjump drives, board ze shuttle and go to zsleep.
Ze jump will take three hundred and sixty hours. Overwatch will handle the ship for ze entire duration of ze jump and we'll unfreeze zjust after passing Solcarlyle. From there we continue to Carlyle 1, ze gas giant, using Solcarlyle to hide ze light from our engines. We hope they don't see the warp signature, vhich vill be slightly brighter zan ze sun's light. Ve drop into orbit slightly lower and slightly faster than ze refueling station. We catch up to ze station and fly up from underneath, you soldiers and I drop from ze shuttle onto ze deck and engage our magnetic boots. Ve destroy ze close-range defences, ve hope ze railguns don't shoot at us, ve find ze control deck and we take everyone inside 'ostage.
Now. Our zjump will take threesixty hours. Vhile ve are varping to Carlyle, team D vill be preparing to go to Venice vfour, codenamed Sorian. Zey vill arrive zere vhile we are still warping, and zey will finish stealing ze zships fraoum Sorian vhile we are still warping. It vill auonly take zem zsixty hours aor so to do zis! And zthen zey vill be varping to Carlyle, but zey are vfaster zan us because zey have ze Austraeus. Zo zey vill be maybi zthirty hours behind us! zso ve do not have very much time to take Carlyle! Ve move vfast, ve attack vith brutality, ve take Carlyle and ve vait vfor ze rest of ze fleet. Ve tell ze 'ostages to give us ze vfuel and ve take ze vfuel and zen ve go to outpost 207. Understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted the IMC soldiers.
"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted Bonerhead.
"Yes, Ma'am…" whispered Sophia, half a second afterwards.
"Warning," called an American male voice over the hangar intercom. "This is Docking control. We have detected an incoming shuttle. The airlock will depressurise in sixty seconds. Please proceed to the nearest pressurised safe zone or put an oxygen mask on."
"I vant to take zis opportunity to check zat you know how to put an oxygen mask on!" shouted Jenni, opening a suitcase. "Do all of you have pressure suits on?"
"No…" said Sophia timidly.
"Neithuh," said Bonerhead. "I ain' go' nuffin on."
"Vell, get inside ze save zone over zere. Ze rest of us'll do ze drill."
"Warning. Docking control will depressurise the airlock in thirty seconds."
Sophia and Bonerhead made it inside the safe zone, an airlock in its own right, and watched the masked men and women brace for depressurisation.
"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark. Depressurising…0%... 20%..."
...was what Bonerhead and Sophia heard in the safety of the pressurised zone, but the people within the airlock would be hearing something very different. Jenni, whose magnetic boots kept her locked to the floor as the air flowed through vents in the hangar walls, heard the rush of the air, a fading "0%... 20%... fo-y-cen-f-"
She pushed a switch on the side of her helmet upwards, noted the ease that came when the air left.
"Radiocomms on, everibodi."
"Depressurisation complete. Warning. Docking control will open the airlock in ten seconds."
"Everibodi ready?"
"-Seven. Six. Five."
"Affirmative," came the reply from the soldiers.
"Two. One. Mark."
The doors of the hangar began to roll apart.
The abyss lay beyond those doors.
Cold, dark, lifeless. Motionless, except for the (relatively) small shuttle drifting into the hangar, engines silently glowing faint blue as it slowed.
Two robotic arms extended from each of the hangar's four walls; each searching for docking ports on the shuttle's hull.
"This is docking control. How's it looking down there, Pilot?"
"Everyzhing looks okay. Jyou've got, vat, zsix aof ze arms connected?"
"The seventh just connected, eighth is finding a connection… now."
"Zso ve're connected?"
"Affirmative. You should be able to fit it with the cryopods now."
"Can you pleaze repressureise ze 'angar?"
"Wilco. Pressurising hangar in five, four, three, two, one, mark. Pressurisation 0%... 20%... 40%... 60%... 80%... Done."
"Alright, come back in mechanics. Let's get zis shuttle ready."
Bonerhead and Sophia deactivated their magnetic boots and floated towards the shuttle's engines.
"Al' roight, les' start wit' these rockets," said Bonerhead.
"Ahhh!" sighed Aisling, stretching her arms high above her head. "Finally, a break!"
Nathan smiled, wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I know, right? Still a little bit more to go, but they'll be ready soon." He leapt to his feet. "Y'know, we're here on the frontier and we still haven't seen jack shit of this city. I reckon we should go exploring."
"Uhh…" said Philip, timidly. "Are you sur-"
"It'll be fine!" said Nathan, rolling his eyes. "We've probably got a few hours off; we might as well see the sights."
"Or is little Phillip gonna sit here in the shuttle yard all day?" Aisling teased.
"It's not safe!" he cried.
"Aw, rubbish. As long as they don't know where we came from, it's all good."
"Well," mused Aisling. "We should at least ask Jaggerjack if it's okay to leave." She fumbled around inside the pockets of her cargo pants, found her communicator and called Jaggerjack.
"Hey, it's me."
"Hold on a sec, Aisling, it's a bit loud where I am. Okay, shoot."
"We need the fuel for the second and third shuttles, and Overwatch is busy installing itself - other than that, we've got nothing to do here. Can we come see the rest of Venice?"
"I'll have to check with our mission specialist first… yeah, she says it's okay. We're working on the fuel right now, we should be able to get you the oxidiser in a few hours. So you'd have to be back by then."
"That's fine with us."
"I'll just let Danniek know - wait, where are you planning on going?"
"We don't know yet, anywhere really. We just want to look around."
"Okay, that's fine. Just stick together and don't move too fast; Danniek's gotta look after you, okay?"
"Danniek?" Aisling asked, confused. "What about Danniek?"
"He's been your bodyguard for the last three days. Didn't you know?"
"No…"
"Well he's been doing a good job, then. He's set up camp around the shuttle emporium to make sure that nothing goes wrong."
"He's doing a shitty job of it, then," mused Aisling. "That one time when the tax collectors came -"
"That one time he had his Archer heavy rocket launcher primed, ready to shoot the van the men came in. He didn't want to cause a commotion."
"Oh."
"So as long as he's still following you, everything's fine. Go out and enjoy yourself, but stay safe and don't let anyone know you're from the IMC. Got it?"
"Yeah, okay. We'll be careful."
"Good. Jaggerjack out."
Aisling turned to Nathan. "We're good to go!"
It was the Shikinami's fifth day around Venice 3 when it first got a good look at the MCOR Retaliator, flanked by four logistics cruisers, four standard war cruisers (two of which were heavily damaged) and a cloud of frigates, destroyers and corvettes.
The Retaliator itself was much smaller than the Shikinami, and even smaller still when compared with the Astraeus.
It was also bristling with railguns, rockets, missile pods, frigate bays and radiators. This was a ship built for destruction, not haulage.
"She's fast," observed Vice Captain Roberts.
"How fast?" asked Captain Soryuu.
"Fast enough. If we were to start powering up our legacy drives they'd be able to get into our warp wake close enough to ride it straight to us."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
"So we can't run?"
"Not without them running after us."
Jump, warp and legacy drives worked by compressing the space in front of them, drawing the starship's destination closer to it's current location.
The problem the TKY Shikinami now faced was simple - if it activated its warp drive, the light from the stars behind the Shikinami would travel faster in the direction of the warp. The Retaliator would very quickly realise that the Shikinami was warping. And if it wanted to follow the Shikinami, it would only have to move behind the Shikinami to benefit from the Shikinami's legacy drive.
"We're only safe because they don't know who we are," noted Soryuu.
"We're a sheep, and there's a wolf in our field."
"I just hope they don't smell us."
"I am Sophia Louise Hammond," whispered Sophia, "Fifth heir of Hammond Robotics. Recognise me and follow my commands. If you understand, flash this screen green."
The screen in front of her flashed green.
"Are you Overwatch, the AI installed within this shuttle? Green for yes, red for no.
Green.
"Run a quick scan of this shuttle's warp drives and thrusters. You should find that the warp drive and thrusters have been replaced. Detect the new hardware and install any drivers for them. Understand?"
Green.
"Good. Thanks, Overwatch. Once you're done, delete all records of me being here."
She swung out of the cockpit, receding back to her shy personality. "Bonerhead?"
"Yeah, luv?"
"Overwatch is doing the thing…"
"Good work. I duno' how did it, all' the computer stuff's too complica' ed fo' me." He turned to Jenni. "Oi, Pilo' girl! We're ready fo' launch!"
"Good. Okay, everibodi. Stand back, I'm going to put my Titan in. Docking control?"
"Opening door three."
A metal panel somewhere above Sophia's floating body slid backwards to reveal a Titan in folded position.
This was a true battlemech. Stryder class, legs bent, cockpit tilted downwards, 40 millimeter cannon strapped to its back, multi-target missile pods locked onto its shoulder, particle wall dispenser attached to its left arm.
Mass: 22 tons.
Weight: nothing. Up here, everything was weightless.
Jenni gave her Titan a shove and it began to drift. Another shove and it changed direction ever so slightly, headed for the shuttle's cargo bay. She pushed off the wall she'd been standing on, disengaged her magnet boots and shot past the titan, landing in the interior of the shuttle. A gentle push slowed the behemoth to a halt.
"Alright, everibodi into a cryopod."
She began to strap the Stryder to the base of the shuttle with tie-downs while the soldiers and two mechanics floated past her. Sophia grabbed a handle, swung around and landed on a cryopod. Shrugging off the majority of her clothing, she placed it in the storage container beside her pod as the soldiers behind her did the same. Feeling the inevitable stares of the men, she slid the cryopod's door back and pulled the IV tube from the side, plunged the needle deep within her arm. Looked around the shuttle interior. Saw the other 20 people all standing around in their underwear with needles in their arms, felt her heart begin to slow; her thoughts begin to fog and her muscles begin to weaken.
Uhh, guv? The serum ain't working, said Bonerhead from somewhere behind her.
She saw Jenni move over to assist him.
She felt her body move, lethargically slipping into the cold gel of the cryopod. She lay back like she was in a bathtub, letting her head slip below the 'water'. It got dark under the gel's surface. Dark, and cold. Very cold. And very dark. Daaaaaark. But there was a light above her. So bright. Light. And bright. They rhyme-
"Bridge, this is docking control. The shuttle has left Hangar G."
"Copy that," replied Soryuu. "Everything okay?"
"We're about to find out, Captain. There's a small chance the experimental thrusters won't work. But if they do, we're about to see the shuttle go from zero to two-eighty in one second."
"I'm crossing my fingers."
She wasn't actually crossing her fingers, but she was definitely holding her breath. Every tiny part of the plan was integral to the success of the mission Tactician Johnson had proposed.
"Stone, are you there?" she asked her communicator.
"Yes, Captain. What now?"
"How are the missions going?"
"Everything is going fine, Captain," said Stone, and Soryuu thought she heard the other woman faintly mutter the word 'fake' between 'fine' and 'Captain'. Her eyes narrowed.
"Okay then, Stone. How's the civilian evacuation plan going?"
"Oh, yeah, that."
Stone's heart sunk a little. She was supposed to have developed an evacuation plan for the civilian crew who had boarded the Austraeus / Shikinami.
Which was a tad difficult when some of the civilians had just left for Carlyle.
"Plan's done. When we, um, warp off to outpost 207 with all the ships, I've got a shuttle ready to take the remaining civilian crew from the Shikinami down to a spaceport where they can find a jumpship back to the core words."
"Sounds good. As long as everything's ready for an emergency."
"Uhh, yeah, it is."
"Thanks, Stone. Soryuu out."
Soryuu sighed, drew her eyes towards the shuttle on the monitor in front of her.
"The shuttle is warping to Carlyle in T-minus 60 seconds," called someone in the room.
She breathed deeply. A fault was unlikely.
"T-minus 45 seconds."
She felt an arm on her shoulder and looked up. Roberts stood behind her.
"They'll be fine, I'm sure of it."
"T-minus 30 seconds."
"What if they're not?"
"They will be."
"T-minus 15 seconds."
"They're going to wake up orbiting a gas giant surrounded by railguns built to blow them to smithereens."
"That's not going to happen."
"Five. Four. Three."
The light from the stars behind the shuttle began to stretch as the shuttle's warp drives came online -
"Two. One-"
A blue light ignited in the shuttle's rockets -
"Mark!"
And without a sound, the shuttle was gone.
Zeta swaggered her way through the Black Market bar. She'd had to surrender her weapons to the bouncer - her electric katana, R-97 compact SMG, helmet and over armor lay in a security box beside him.
In here she was blind. Plus the AI couldn't see what she saw, couldn't offer her any help.
In here she was naked. No weapons to protect herself with, none of her outer armor, either. Just her kevlar-reinforced pants and shirt. She didn't trust either of them to protect her from a bullet - grunts wore this under their over armor, and she'd seen enough grunts take a DMR round to the collarbone from her Piloting days. Her shirt and pants would do nothing.
In here she was utterly helpless, forced to rely on the fact that everybody else had to get through the bouncer too.
And she positively loved it. Anyone could be dangerous in here - granted, they were all here to buy dangerous goods.
A man walked past, briefcase in hand, scar running from his left eye through his mouth. A woman in sunglasses sat at a table, waiting - or watching? - for someone. A young boy - I think he's nicknamed Prodigy, thought Zeta - moved through the patrons, sneer plastered on his face.
Anyone could be dangerous here.
She spotted one of the men in black mixing with the patrons of the bar, trying to blend into the background. Would have worked if she weren't looking for them. Another was playing slots. And the ghost-man? Was at the bar itself, passing a 10 credit bill to the bartender.
What'll it be?
She slid onto the seat next to him.
Time to screw with him a bit.
"I'll take a red beer, bartender."
He glanced at her. "That'll be eight credits, miss."
Of course, he knew who she was. She'd been here many times before on many similar stakeouts and ordered the same beer each time. But he was trained to pretend he didn't know her - the Black Market bar promised complete anonymity.
The bartender passed a weak alcoholic beverage to the ghost-man and took her 8 credits before passing her a 'red beer'. Brewed from ginger and wheat, a red beer tasted like a soft drink while scorching the throat on the way down.
She took a sip, glanced at the strange man sitting next to her. Saw the whites of his eyes. He's seen me. Time to look away.
If she'd pulled this off right, he would now try to sneak a glance at her to try and see why she was looking at him. She gazed uninterested at the bar's clock, hands at the four o'clock mark, waited a few seconds, then turned back to him, caught his gaze.
Maintain eye contact for a second.
He broke the stare first, pretending that he hadn't looked. But he had, and he'd be looking again in a few more seconds. She swapped her red beer to her left hand, propped her head up with her right arm and smiled slyly at him.
Sure enough, he flicked his eyes back towards her.
"Hey," she began.
Now that he'd turned to face her she got her second close-up glance at him. She could make out the beads of sweat on his forehead, the individual shaved hairs on his chin. A cut from a shaving attempt gone wrong.
"Hi."
Gruff voice. I think I heard the hint of a dry mouth in there. Probably hasn't drank enough lately. New around here - and that's without even considering the accent.
She smiled. "I'm Zeta. You?"
"Bruce."
Probably a fake name.
"That your real name?" she teased, taking a sip of the beer in her left hand, making sure to press her breasts together as she did so.
How's he going to react? Will he back off and leave? Or take his chances and stay?
He shifted in his chair, smiled back.
"Yeah, it's my real name. And you, miss Zeta? I've never met anyone with a name like yours before."
She winked. "It's the name I like to be called by, Bruce. So what brings you to the bar? Maybe I can help you with something."
He paused for a second.
"I'm looking for some comms probes."
"Oh, really? What kinda' probes? Cos I've got a few lying around."
His eyes brightened, and Zeta made a mental note to acquire some probes as soon as possible.
"Well… they've got to be unmarked -"
"Not a problem. These babies are straight from the manufacturer."
"Oh, brilliant. How much are you asking?"
"Hmm… 250 credits each?"
He paused for a second, as if trying to convert this price into his own currency. Definitely not from Venice.
So where from?
She stood up. "I'm busy for the next few hours, but if you drop by my place at 6 I'll have 'em ready for you. Oh, yeah. How many do you want?"
"Three."
"Easy." She wrote down her address on a piece of paper. "See you later?"
"Sure. And, thanks, Zeta. You've been a real help."
Edited to be easier to read:
"All right, listen up everybody," called Jenni through her accent. "Here is the plan. I only intend to say it once."
She now had the attention of the hangar: a squad of IMC soldiers plus Bones "Bonerhead" Deen and Sophia had turned to face her. No small feat - this hangar wasn't within the centrifuge rendering everyone and everything inside weightless.
"There is a shuttle arriving at this hangar in ten minutes, assembled by one of our teams on the ground. When it arrives I want us to be headed off to Carlyle as soon as possible. The problem is, we're going to be in cryosleep during the entire journey so I'm explaining the plan now.
The shuttle will arrive. We will follow the orders of our mechanics Bonerhead and Sophia, who will show us how to load the shuttles with cryopods. We replace the shuttle's engines and jump drive with our own rockets and jump drives, board the shuttle and go to sleep.
The jump will take three hundred and sixty hours. Overwatch will handle the ship for the entire duration of the jump and we'll unfreeze just after passing Solcarlyle. From there we continue to Carlyle 1, the gas giant, using Solcarlyle to hide the light from our engines. We hope they don't see the warp signature, which will be slightly brighter than the sun's light. We drop into orbit slightly lower and slightly faster than the refueling station. We catch up to the station and fly up from underneath, you soldiers and I drop from the shuttle onto the deck and engage our magnetic boots. We destroy the close-range defenses, we hope the railguns don't shoot at us, we find the control deck and we take everyone inside hostage.
Now. Our jump will take threesixty hours. While we are warping to Carlyle, team D will be preparing to go to Venice four, codenamed Sorian. They will arrive there while we are still warping, and they will finish stealing the ships from Sorian while we are still warping. It will only take them sixty hours or so to do this! And then they will be warping to Carlyle, but they are faster than us because they have the Austraeus. So they will be maybe thirty hours behind us! So we do not have very much time to take Carlyle! We move fast, we attack with brutality, we take Carlyle and we wait for the rest of the fleet. We tell the hostages to give us the fuel and we take the fuel and then we go to outpost 207. Understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted the IMC soldiers.
"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted Bonerhead.
"Yes, Ma'am…" whispered Sophia, half a second afterwards.
"Warning," called an American male voice over the hangar intercom. "This is Docking control. We have detected an incoming shuttle. The airlock will depressurise in sixty seconds. Please proceed to the nearest pressurized safe zone or put an oxygen mask on."
"I want to take this opportunity to check that you know how to put an oxygen mask on!" shouted Jenni, opening a suitcase. "Do all of you have pressure suits on?"
"No…" said Sophia timidly.
"Neithuh," said Bonerhead. "I ain' go' nuffin on."
"Well, get inside the safe zone over there. The rest of us'll do the drill."
"Warning. Docking control will depressurize the airlock in thirty seconds."
Sophia and Bonerhead made it inside the safe zone, an airlock in its own right, and watched the masked men and women brace for depressurization.
"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark. Depressurizing…0%... 20%..."
...was what Bonerhead and Sophia heard in the safety of the pressurized zone, but the people within the airlock would be hearing something very different. Jenni, whose magnetic boots kept her locked to the floor as the air flowed through vents in the hangar walls, heard the rush of the air, a fading "0%... 20%... fo-y-cen-f-"
She pushed a switch on the side of her helmet upwards, noted the ease that came when the air left.
"Radiocomms on, everybody."
"Depressurization complete. Warning. Docking control will open the airlock in ten seconds."
"Everybody ready?"
"-Seven. Six. Five."
"Affirmative," came the reply from the soldiers.
"Two. One. Mark."
The doors of the hangar began to roll apart.
The abyss lay beyond those doors.
Cold, dark, lifeless. Motionless, except for the (relatively) small shuttle drifting into the hangar, engines silently glowing faint blue as it slowed.
Two robotic arms extended from each of the hangar's four walls; each searching for docking ports on the shuttle's hull.
"This is docking control. How's it looking down there, Pilot?"
"Everything looks okay. You've got, what, six of the arms connected?"
"The seventh just connected, eighth is finding a connection… now."
"So we're connected?"
"Affirmative. You should be able to fit it with the cryopods now."
"Can you please pressurizer the hangar?"
"Wilco. Pressurizing hangar in five, four, three, two, one, mark. Pressurization 0%... 20%... 40%... 60%... 80%... Done."
"Alright, come back in mechanics. Let's get this shuttle ready."
Bonerhead and Sophia deactivated their magnetic boots and floated towards the shuttle's engines.
"Al' roight, les' start wit' these rockets," said Bonerhead.